The next BioCriticism webinar will take place on zoom on the 24th of May at 2 pm CET (Paris time): Paul Hamann-Rose (University of Passau) will give a talk on “Books of Life in the Age of the Genome“. His respondent will be Rūta Šlapkauskaitė (Vilnius University). All are welcome.
BioCriticism webinar, 24th of May 2024, 2 pm CET
“Books of Life in the Age of the Genome”
Speaker: Dr. Paul Hamann-Rose (University of Passau)
Respondent: Dr. Rūta Šlapkauskaitė (Vilnius University)
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82747277584?pwd=TjUwdUhYb2ZDbloxQmFPYUgwRFEydz09
Meeting ID: 827 4727 7584
Passcode: 329900
Abstract: Over the course of the second half of the twentieth century, the novel increasingly enters into dialogue with genetic discourses of life, examining their foundational assumptions as well as potential consequences for individuals and socio-political communities. The novel does not simply embrace the new genetic propositions but appropriates and critically examines them. Central concerns that have shaped the novel’s traditional representation of life expand to include a newly genetic perspective. In the age of the genome, I argue, the novel emerges as a genetic ‘book of life’. To demonstrate the theoretical, aesthetic and political consequences of this development, I turn to Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy. The trilogy’s ambitious imaginative treatment of genetic discourses and technologies exemplifies an important ecological exploration of genetic science today, which underlines the critical potential of the novel to contribute to cultural and socio-political debates about future life on the planet.
Paul Hamann-Rose is Assistant Professor of English Literature and Culture at the University of Passau, Germany. He studied at the University of London Institute in Paris and at the University of Hamburg, where he received his PhD. His two principle areas of research are the legal and cultural construction of authorship across the new media landscapes of British Romanticism, and the interrelations between literature and genetic science. For the last couple of years, he has been a member of the GetPreCiSe research project on genetic privacy at Vanderbilt University. He has published widely on cultural representations of genetic science in contexts from postcolonialism to privacy and bioethics. His book Genetics and the Novel: Reimagining Life Through Fiction has just been published with the Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine series.
Rūta Šlapkauskaitė is an Associate Professor of English literature at Vilnius University, Lithuania. Her research interests include Canadian and Australian literature, neo-Victorianism, and environmental humanities. She has collaborated with colleagues from Sweden and Estonia in a Nordplus project on Canadian Studies and is currently participating in the EU Horizon projectMotherNet, which marshals cross-disciplinary perspectives on the material and discursive practices of motherhood. Among her recent ecocritical publications are articles on Canadian authors Fred Stenson and Ed O’Loughlin, and Caribbean writer David Dabydeen. Rūta is currently researching the conceptual relevance of genre in narrating the climate emergency in contemporary Anglophone literatures.
